hard week: a list

cecily's favorite sunday dinner, chicken n' dumplings.  now that bammy's back, we'll be having sunday dinner at her house again.  i'll be in charge of dessert.

it's been a rough week.

that tends to happen the week after you have a week away from work, right?

therefore, next week will be better, right?

so i'm gonna try to make myself feel better and write a list.

things i'm grateful for:


1.  i'm almost done reading james and the giant peach  to my youngest child.  i've read it to all of my children.  i have five children.  therefore, i will never, ever again have to read james and the giant peach out loud again.  i'm also grateful to have five beautiful children to read to, even if i hate some of the books i have to read.

2.  eva's new, for realz, legit job.

3.  craig dworkin's a handbook of protocols for literary listening and his pamphlet do or d.i.y.

4.  coleridge's a lime-tree bower my prison.

5.  extra-strength tylenol.

6.  my '98 green isuzu oasis.  after an unmentionably priced set of repairs this week, she drives like a dream, and i still have no car payment.

7.  bammy's return from canada after six months away.  sundays are about to get a lot radder.

8.  the daily show, the colbert report, and a new show based on sherlock holmes with lucy liu as dr. watson.  we're watching it in mere moments.  please god, let it be good!

9.  the carillon.  how many people have a carillon nearby?  it's pretty rad. also, how many people have a spouse who composes experimental music for carillon?  that's what i thought.

10. the fact that project runway's baby design challenge wasn't as lame as i thought it would be.  can you tell how i've spent my thursday night?  (in bed, with the remote.  i'm so ashamed, julie turley.  you're probably out watching avant-garde theatre on the street with philip glass).

conversation

i spent the day thinking about this "conversation" poem by s.t. coleridge.  i don't have anything too insightful to say about it yet, except to point out the use of silence & quiet in the poem--the "strange and extreme silentness," "the sole unquiet thing," and so on, until, "quietly shining to the quiet moon." maybe the silence is a nod to the ineffable nature of truth?  and also to say:  i love me some blank verse.

another part of the day was spent helping my students enter the academic conversation with their research papers.  we talked about adding to the body of work done on their topics with their own research, not simply reporting what others have said. we talked about crossing the threshold between the room where they've lived for most of their lives being receptors of knowledge into the much grander salon where they become creators of knowledge. they seem to be doing well, and i even got a complimentary email from the librarian, who met with them last week, noticing their high level of preparation.  i guess it's true that when you do something for a long time you get good at it.

tonight i fell asleep at eight, then woke up to do my blog post.  it was an exhausting day.  i'll probably turn right back in after i finish.  and pick up the conversation where i left off tomorrow.

Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry

Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings: save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings-on of life,

Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets, every where

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

                      But O! how oft,

How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft

With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,

Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang

From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,

Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

And so I brooded all the following morn,

Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye

Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,

Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

         Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the intersperséd vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

And in far other scenes! For I was reared

In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

         Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

schadenfreude: 10 poets who are more flagrantly irresponsible/off balance than girl in tights

watermelon picnic basket carrying work lunch=a toothy smile in a tight day

girl in tight place,

nestled, snuggled, firmly ensconced

or, on some (ummm, many?) days, tightly wedged

& stuck

in the crevice of the bourgeousie

& in a place 

where the college loans, credit card debt,

mortgage payment, lawn care, house renovation mania (in which i refuse/am unable to participate),

& the hoards of seemingly perfect children

who are neatly groomed & consistently do all their homework

close in on me

like the walls of the giant garbage compactor in star wars episode IV: a new hope

that almost crushes luke, leia, han solo, and chewy.

like last night,

around 2 a.m.

i'm lying on the couch

wide awake

alternating between plans

to become a more fit citizen of such a neighborhood

& a way to get a jet pack to blast the hell outta here.

call it schadenfruede, call it cold comfort, but it makes me

feel a little better to know there were (& are) poets who were even worse

than i at managing the details of life, who screwed up &

acted like bigger douchebags than me--as if my floundering

& haplessness might be a sign of genius,

as if majorly screwing up, as if profligacy, could make one

a poetic genius

(fallacy: ad hoc, ergo propter hoc).

as in: it could be worse.  as if, through juxtaposition,

i could look real good.

check these folks out, and congratulate yourself for your good behavior or
decide that maybe your bad behavior can be forgiven (unless otherwise noted, the link on the 
poet's name will take you to the website the italicized quote is taken from):

1.  christopher smart 

In spite of having a wife and family to support, Smart continued as thriftless as ever in the 1750s, spending freely on clothes and entertainment and borrowing from Newbery when he got into difficulties. Hunter describes him as "friendly, affectionate, and liberal to excess," but so regardless of practicalities that according to his wife he often invited company to dinner when there was not enough in the house to provide a meal even for themselves.

2. anne sexton

one of my favorite poets, i'm hesitant to say that mental illness is bad behavior, but who knows where on the continuum of drug abuse, personal betrayal, & instablility the responsibility for her actions lies.  here's a an exceprt from her bio at modern poetry that's a little salacious:   

Estranged from many of her former friends, Sexton became difficult for her maturing daughters to deal with. Aware that many of her readers did not like the religious poetry that she had recently begun writing with her more personal themes, Sexton became nervous about her poetry. Readings had always terrified her, but now she employed a rock group to back up her performances. She forced herself to be an entertainer, while her poems grew more and more privately sacral. In 1972 she published The Book of Folly and, in 1974, the ominously titled The Death Notebooks. Later that year, she completed The Awful Rowing toward God, published posthumously in 1975. Divorced and living by herself, Sexton was lonely and seemed to be searching for compassion through love affairs. She continued to be in psychotherapy, from which she evidently gained little solace. In October 1974, after having lunched with Maxine Kumin, Sexton asphyxiated herself with carbon monoxide in her garage in Boston.

3.  allen ginsberg 

so obvious i hardly need to put him on the list, but here's a tidbit i didn't know before today, when i began seeking information on the foibles of others in order to soothe myself:


Known for their unconventional views, and frequently rambunctious behavior, Ginsberg and his friends also experimented with drugs. On one occasion, Ginsberg used his college dorm room to store stolen goods acquired by an acquaintance. Faced with prosecution, Ginsberg decided to plead insanity and subsequently spent several months in a mental institution.

4.  ezra pound 

duh.

the new york times puts it mildly in this article about poetry magazine  & pound's relationship with the editor of poetry, harriet monroe:

Pound kept badgering Monroe over the years, while she indulged his bad temper and seemingly limitless capacity for self-pity. Before long, he was living in Rapallo and praising Fascists, and his letters appear less frequently and then vanish as he disappeared into propaganda and madness. But before he turned political, Pound was poetry's No. 1 nut, and when he leaves the pages of ''Dear Editor,'' much of the fun does, too. 

5. derek walcott

i wanted to study with him as an undergraduate.  the gossip pegs him as a philanderer, and in my own investigation, a playwright friend of mine who studied with him apparently did not get sexually harrassed by him, but did tell me the following, "he was always drunk.  and he has a.d.d.  so i learned a lot from him because i had to work so hard to keep his attention.  the minute he got bored he would quit reading your work and giving you feedback."

remember the 2002 scandal about him, wherein two poets behaved badly, the little "contretemps" between ruth padel and derek walcott?  here's a little excerpt from the guardian article:

There is something a bit grubby and commercial in Walcott's behaviour, certainly according to the claims made against him, in the 80s and 90s, that the grades he gave reflected the fact he'd been sexually rejected, in the first instance, and in the second, that he wanted sex in return for help producing a play. You'd want a poet to have more soul, wouldn't you? Sure, fall in love with a student, the heart wants what it wants – the poet's heart (I guess) doubly so. But don't measure out your love in half-hours and end-of-term grades. What would TS Eliot say?

 6. lord byron

In June 1813 Byron began an affair with his twenty-nine-year-old half sister, Augusta. Married since 1807 to her spendthrift cousin, Colonel George Leigh, she had three daughters and lived at Six Mile Bottom, near Cambridge. With his mother’s death in 1811, Augusta became Byron’s sole remaining close relative, a situation which doubtless increased his sense of identity with her. While no legal proof exists, the circumstantial evidence in Byron’s letters dating from August 1813 to his horrified confidante Lady Melbourne strongly suggests an incestuous connection with Augusta.

In the midst of this relationship, Byron received a letter from Annabella Milbanke, who confessed her mistake in rejecting his proposal and cautiously sought to renew their friendship. Correspondence ensued. He later wrote Lady Melbourne that Augusta wished him "much to marry—because it was the only chance of redemption for two persons."

7. samuel taylor coleridge

from wikipedia

Dorothy Wordsworth was shocked at his condition upon his return. From 1807 to 1808, Coleridge returned to Malta and then travelled in Sicily and Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. Thomas de Quincey alleges in his Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict, using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been suggested, however, that this reflects de Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's.
 
His opium addiction (he was using as much as two quarts of laudanum a week) now began to take over his life: he separated from his wife Sarah in 1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814.

8. sylvia plath


i can scarce bring myself to add her to the list as her behavior is not so much "bad" as the behavior of one severely, fatally afflicted by mental illness.  her suicide during her children's nap time leads one to believe that the woman had truly run out of hope, options, and her last ounce of strength.

nonetheless, i think about her when times get tough.  a troubled life can also contain transcendent goodness and beauty.  the exploration of darkness can also guide us to the light.


9.  charles bukowski

from the poetry foundation:

Ending up near death in Los Angeles, Bukowski started writing again, though he would continue to drink and cultivate his reputation as a hard-living poet.

&

“Published by small, underground presses and ephemeral mimeographed little magazines,” described Jay Dougherty in Contemporary Novelists, “Bukowski has gained popularity, in a sense, through word of mouth.” “The main character in his poems and short stories, which are largely autobiographical, is usually a down-and-out writer [Henry Chinaski] who spends his time working at marginal jobs (and getting fired from them), getting drunk and making love with a succession of bimbos and floozies,” related Ciotti. “Otherwise, he hangs out with fellow losers—whores, pimps, alcoholics, drifters.”


10. George Crabbe

from wikipedia

He continued to rack up debts that he had no way of paying, and his creditors pressed him. He later told Walter Scott and John Gibson Lockhart that "during many months when he was toiling in early life in London he hardly ever tasted butchermeat except on a Sunday, when he dined usually with a tradesman's family, and thought their leg of mutton, baked in the pan, the perfection of luxury." In early 1781 he wrote a letter to Edmund Burke asking for help, in which he included samples of his poetry. Burke was swayed by Crabbe's letter and a subsequent meeting with him, giving him a gift of money to relieve his immediate wants, and assuring him that he would do all in his power to further Crabbe's literary career. Among the samples that Crabbe had sent to Burke were pieces of his poems The Library and The Village.^[15][16]

A short time after their first meeting Burke told his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds that he had "the mind and feelings of a gentleman." Burke gave Crabbe the footing of a friend, admitting him to his family circle at Beaconsfield. There he was given an apartment, supplied with books, and made a member of the family. The time he spent with Burke and his family helped in enlarging his knowledge and ideas, and introducing him to many new and valuable friends including Charles James Fox and Samuel Johnson. He completed his unfinished poems and revised others with the help Burke's criticism. Burke helped him have his poem, The Library, published anonymously in June 1781, by a publisher that had previously refused some of his work. The Library was greeted with a small amount of praise from critics, and only slight public appreciation.^[17]

 
 a few questions arise from the very preliminary research i did today for this post, thinking about the poets who were gamblers, addicts, insane, philanderers, divas, narcissists, & fools:

1) where are all the bad girl poets?

2) why do the biographers of more than half of the ten poets listed attribute the emotional instability of the poet's mother as a factor in that poet's subsequent bad behavior?  (plath's problems are famously attributed to her father, but ultimately rest on her mother who was too weak to protect her.)

3) i know this question is sort of passé, but does the poet seek trouble as artistic material or does the troubled being seek art as transcendence from a troubled life?

4) there must be a million other cool, badly behavaed poets out there.  who are they, and what did they do?

legwear: black lace leggings à la madonna circa 1983 (see picture above)

inspired by: poetic output in the midst of starvation, abuse, depression, and illness


looking forward to:  performance with lalage at muse music tonight